The textile art industry is well established and includes many methods and processes for decorating and personalizing garments and other material items. Some of these methods and processes include applying appliqués, silk-screening, and machining stitching in the shape of various designs directly on garments and other items.
The appliqué method involves placing one layer of fabric over another layer of fabric and securing the first layer of fabric in place. There are many ways to carry out the appliqué method including, but not limited to, basting or sewing the first layer to the second layer, applying an adhesive to the back of the first layer before placement on the second layer, and using heat transfer to transfer an adhesive material to one or more sides of the fabric layers.
A wide variety of designs and materials are available for applying appliqués to other material items, especially garments. One popular design includes alphabetical letters and/or numbers as appliqués that are secured to garments such as letter jackets and sweaters. Sewing of the letter and/or number appliqués to the garments was the typical process used to create these designs. Over a long period of time, these types of appliqués would suffer wear and tear resulting in portions or pieces of the appliqués being torn from the stitched on appliqué. Today, this vintage clothing is very popular and very much in demand. Accordingly, clothing manufacturers are in need of a way to produce clothing having this vintage look without having to go through the actual aging process of the garment.
While it is possible to cut appliqués in the shape of letters and/or numbers having portions or pieces of the letters or numbers missing, and then sewing them to garments to create clothing having a vintage look, the resulting garment does not appear to be authentic. Therefore, in order to meet the demand for vintage look clothing, there is a need for an efficient and effective process for applying appliqués to garments or other materials which provides authentic looking vintage clothing. The present invention provides such a process and components used in that process.